I have not been taking Reuters to task as much as I used to do, although every now and then I still seem to find a blooper that gets under my skin. The fact is that I abandoned my Reuters RSS feeds some time ago; so, if I encounter Reuters at all, it is probably during one of my rare ventures into Yahoo! News, whose blunders always seem to exceed any I found in Reuters by (at least) an order of magnitude. As a result, when I encountered an instance of Reuters doing something right this morning, I could not say whether or not it was particularly new; but it definitely deserves credit.
I encountered this “something” while reading a piece by Kristina Cooke under the headline, “China news agency leases plum Times Square ad space.” At the very bottom of the article was the following parenthesis:
(Editing by Mark Egan and Eric Walsh)
This is the first time I have seen such a credit. Usually that space is used to acknowledge other “contributors,” without making it clear what was contributed. Given the extent to which the Internet has pretty much sucked the life out of any qualities that distinguish journalism as a profession, the idea of acknowledging by name those involved in the editing side of the profession is a rather astonishing bit of relief. At the very least it is a gentle reminder that those who edit are as responsible for what one reads as are those who report.
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